Israel nears breakthrough deal on settlements

Israel is willing to offer a last-minute compromise on settlement building in an effort to salvage peace talks with the Palestinian leadership, one of the Jewish state's officials has said.

Settlers have pledged to resume construction when the moratorium expires on Sunday eveningPhoto: AFP

By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem

4:33PM BST 24 Sep 2010

News of a possible breakthrough came just 48 hours before a partial moratorium on Jewish residential building in the West Bank expires on Sunday evening.

A row over the extension of the settlement freeze has threatened to derail the negotiations, launched in Washington at the beginning of the month. Israel has refused to prolong the moratorium, while the Palestinian leadership had threatened to walk out of the talks if any Jewish construction on occupied territory resumed.

Amid growing US pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to find a mutually acceptable solution, one of his officials hinted that the Israeli prime minister was prepared to cede more ground to the Palestinians than previously stated. "Israel is prepared to reach a compromise acceptable to all parties," the official was quoted as saying. Without providing details of any new offer, the official insisted that "there cannot be zero construction".

Both Mr Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart, have softened their positions in recent days though it is far from clear whether the gap between them can be bridged in time to save the talks.

Adding to the increasingly fraught atmosphere, leaders of the 300,000 strong settler community in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation for 43 years, said they would resume construction at exactly 6.06pm on Sunday, the moment the 10-month moratorium expires.

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Ceremonies are being planned in settlements across the West Bank to celebrate the end of the freeze. The settlers say planning permission for more than 2,000 homes has been completed, meaning they can build immediately.

Amid the growing tension, a Palestinian fisherman was shot dead by the Israeli navy after his boat neared the perimeter of a three-mile naval blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza. Eighteen Palestinians have also been detained in connection with clashes in east Jerusalem, police said on Friday.

A Palestinian government official said that Mr Abbas would withdraw from the talks if a single new settler home was built with the sanction of the Israeli government. But in an indication that there would be no immediate crisis for the talks, he said that the Palestinian leadership would not hold the Israeli government responsible for any unilateral building by the settlers themselves.

Nor would the Palestinian leadership withdraw from the talks if the Israeli government failed to issue a formal declaration prolonging the moratorium.

Instead Mr Abbas would accept an undeclared extension of the moratorium under which it would be understood that bureaucratic hurdles would be erected to ensure that the settlers were prevented from building, he said. The official added that the Palestinians would wait several weeks before making an assessment on how sincere Israel's efforts to restrain the settlers were.